Out of Frame
by K Hanna Korossy
Summary: Monster Movie tag: So here's what was really going on...


**Out of Frame**  
K Hanna Korossy

They were about a half hour out of Canonsburg, just past the Pennsylvania state line, that stupid mood music still on the radio. Dean yawned wide enough for his ears to pop…and the world seemed to shift.

Color kicked up several notches in the fall foliage around them, soft bursts of yellows and oranges. The grey sky cleared into a pale blue. Even the black of the Impala's hood and dash deepened in a metallic shine. The radio faded out, then back in on a loud rendition of "Thunderstruck," and Dean's head cleared along with it.

He blinked, frowning; it was disconcertingly like waking up from a dream. Dean glanced over at Sam. "You feel that?"

Dean wasn't reassured in the slightest when his brother looked back at him with confusion mirroring Dean's. "Did…something just…?" Sam sounded almost dazed.

Okay, that did it. Dean yanked the wheel and pulled off onto the gravel shoulder. There, he idled the engine, staring back at Sam. "Yeah. Don't ask me what, but…yeah, I think it did."

"Huh."

His thoughts exactly.

Sam's nose wrinkled. "Felt kinda like, I don't know, a spell being broken or something. Right? Like that time in Louisiana with the ticked-off bokor?"

They looked at each other a moment. Then Sam was pulling out Dad's journal, while Dean jumped out of the car and went around to the trunk. The EMF meter didn't register a thing, and the wards all looked in place. The blades gleamed in the late morning sun, and Dean almost touched the Bowie to make sure it was real before he shook the thought off as ridiculous. Of course it was real. Now, anyway.

And…he had no idea why he'd thought that.

Frustrated, he grabbed a few items from the trunk, slammed the lid down, and stalked back to the open driver's side door.

Sam looked up at him as Dean threw himself back in and immediately pulled out his lighter to put flame to the bundle of herbs he held in one hand. The pungent smell filled the car, and Dean held the twist until it grew too warm, then dropped it into the car's ashtray.

Sam's eyebrow went up. "You think we're still being affected?"

"I don't know what to think, but I'm not taking any chances," Dean growled, lighting a second bundle, this one sweet-smelling. "You got a better idea?"

Sam's only answer was a few lines of Latin murmured under his breath.

There was no shimmer of revelation, although if the spell or glamour had dropped, it wouldn't manifest now, anyway. Dean grimaced. Terrific. So they had no idea what had happened, how they'd been affected or even _if_ they had. The idea made his skin crawl.

Sam shut the journal, one long finger keeping his place. He turned toward Dean and hitched a leg up onto the seat. "Okay, so what do you remember?"

"You mean besides being monster mashed?" Dean blew out a breath, letting the frustration bleed from him with the air. Sam being all rational sometimes just wound him tighter, but more often it was calming. "Shapeshifter with a thing for old horror flicks kept killing people like they were extras in an Ed Wood movie. We ganked it, I got the girl, end of story." He looked at Sam uneasily. "Jamie was real, right? I mean, she felt real." He slid into a grin, gaze unfocusing. "She _really _felt—"

"Yeah, Dean, I get it," Sam said witheringly. "And I remember her, too, so…"

So. Yeah, that was about where they were stuck.

Dean turned to look back out the windshield, thumb stroking lightly over the Impala's steering wheel as he considered.

"Okay, so, we're sure this has something to do with Canonsburg, right?" The case before that, a simple haunting in a bed-and-breakfast, had been normal enough. At Sam's slow nod, Dean flipped through his memories of the past few days.

And felt his expression sour. In hindsight, the flat detail of the town was obvious, the lack of color and realism in Oktoberfest. They had to have been affected the whole time they'd been in town, the curse or spell or whatever it was strong enough that they hadn't even noticed. And wasn't that just awesome?

Yeah, so a movie-loving shapeshifter wasn't totally ridiculous. And Jamie had been oh-so-very right. But that little dweeb Ed, seriously? Dean letting his drink get spiked like that? And spilling his feelings to Jamie like some sort of _Terms of Endearment _reject… God, he hadn't even told Sam some of that stuff.

Speaking of which, sending Sam off by himself after a shapeshifter? In what fantasy was that remotely realistic?

"Were you…wearing lederhosen?" Sam broke in uncertainly from next to him.

Dean flinched very deep inside. Man, there was no _way _this could be real. He gave Sam a totally unfaked look of horror. "Dude, what kind of acid trip were you on?"

Sam flushed. "Never mind."

Dean shook his head. "Okay, so I think we can agree we were whammied somehow. If it was a spell on the whole town, we probably would've felt it going in, too. You think the shifter did it?"

"The shifter's dead, Dean…unless we were duped into thinking that, too." Sam shuffled in his seat, eyes narrowing at the journal as if it were keeping secrets from him. "You ever hear of a shifter having that kind of abilities?"

Dean rubbed at his lip. "'Clouding men's minds'?" he asked dryly, then shrugged. "Not that I ever came across. Or Dad."

"We could call Bobby," Sam offered.

Dean groaned. "I feel stupid enough already, thanks." He glanced back at the road behind them, half expecting to see a line of demarcation between reality and B-Movieland but finding only an unchanging stretch of road and trees. They weren't even creepy trees. "I know where we can probably find some answers, though."

Sam looked remarkably unenthused at the thought. "Great. What happened to getting out of town before anyone found the shifter's body?"

"If there is a body," Dean said pointedly, turning forward and slipping the car back into Drive. He made a graceful u-turn and headed back the way they'd come. "Dude, maybe we just dreamed the whole thing. Kinda like a repeat of the whole djinn gig." Another pleasant thought.

But Sam didn't answer him. He was already buried in Dad's journal again.

00000

Nothing happened on the trip back, although Dean had been half-braced for it. The colors and shadows didn't change, the music was still its normal diegetic rock, and Sam was buried in his notes, muttering to himself. Same old, same old.

Reaching the first intersection in town, Dean slowed at the light. "Tavern?"

Sam's head tilted as he studied the streets. "Shapeshifter's house?" he countered, eyebrow going up.

"House it is." Dean turned the wheel.

It wasn't far, although it was…different. Whereas Dean's memory provided a spooky mansion on a hill complete with lightning and probably a stuffed Mrs. Bates in the basement, the house was merely big and old, roof sagging and paint peeling from the wooden frame. He exchanged a glance with Sam as he turned off the car, then they got out as one and headed back to the trunk.

Silver-loaded gun in hand, Dean led the way inside.

The door was unlocked, and didn't even creak when it swung open at Dean's tap. Which was oddly disappointing, but he didn't share that with Sam, just slunk inside, weapon at ready. If the shifter wasn't dead from Jamie drilling it full of silver holes, they needed to be even more on guard. Like Dean wasn't already with something that could drop him into Bela Lugosi territory without his even realizing it. Iron rounds, salt, holy water, and a couple varieties of herbs and blessed wards were stuffed into his pockets just in case.

The layout, at least, was as he remembered it. "Lab" to the left, past the broken plywood doors, bedroom to the right at the end of the hall. Dean led the way in, hearing Sam's cautious step right behind him, and his eyes immediately gravitated to the body in the chair to one side.

Some shapeshifters melted or reverted to their true form when they died. Skinwalkers stayed in their final shape, and, being basically human, decomposed like any other body. Dracula-wannabe was just starting to discolor, body stiff with rigor.

Dean still approached him cautiously, then reached out with his gun to carefully poke. "Doornail," he muttered, half-glancing back over his shoulder at Sam.

Sam was looking past him, gun aimed and locked.

Dean's head and weapon swung up as one…and he blinked at what he found in his sights. "Ed?"

It was Ed Brewer…and not. The guy was still a dweeb with greasy hair in a tattered wifebeater and boxers. But the twitchiness was gone, the cowed body language. He moved with confidence now, the slight smile on his face one of superiority and secrets. "Winchesters. I knew I wouldn't fool you for long." His voice sounded stronger, certain.

Dean blinked. He could practically hear Sam's jaw drop behind him. His gun never wavering, he tipped his head. "I'm guessing you're not Ed Brewer."

He got a shrug for that. "Seeing as I created him, if I'm not, who is?"

"That's a good question," Sam snapped from behind Dean. "Who are you?"

The sly smile looked out of place on Brewer's face. "You don't know me, but I know you. You met one of my brothers before—Oakland Park ring any bells?"

It was vaguely familiar to Dean, but he felt the sudden spike of tension from Sam. "You're a trickster," his brother said, voice shaking with barely controlled rage.

The being's grin just widened.

Crap. Dean's gun dipped; it wouldn't be much use against a trickster, anyway. Not that he was sure yet that was what they were facing…but it fit: the manipulation of reality, the whimsical games, even the less-than-saintly victims. Not a lot of things had the mojo to pull off something on this scale, but a trickster sure did.

Like the time it had locked Sam in a time loop of Dean's deaths.

Sam was breathing hard behind him, harsh, painful rasps. Dean could just imagine what kind of emotions and memories this was dredging up, and he half-turned, keeping the trickster in his peripheral vision as he looked at his brother's strained face. "Sammy, go wait in the car."

Sam's eyes darted from the trickster to Dean, surprise and rebellion and a hint of betrayal in the darkened hazel.

Dean softened his look, mouth twisting ruefully. "We can't kill his kind, remember? Go chill in the car, dude, alphabetize the trunk or something." He twitched an eyebrow.

Sam's eyes suddenly lightened, and he nodded tightly. He gave the trickster one more sharp look, throat working a moment, then glanced briefly back at Dean before he dropped his arm and turned away. Sam's shoulders were rounded as he plodded out the door, and Dean felt a spark of empathy.

Then he turned back to the shifter, smirk in place. "So. Karloff and you here work together, lure victims in to get a taste of their own medicine?"

"Brewer" threw back his head with a laugh. "That's what you think? Man, you two are even stupider than I heard."

They were both circling slowly, the easy movements of two predators sizing each other up. Dean smiled. "Okay, then, enlighten me. That's what your kind enjoys, right, monologuing about how brilliant you are?"

"Only compared to you stupid mortals." The flat lips pulled into a smug smile. "But this one was pretty inspired. See, I hardly had to do anything. He," a casual flick of the hand at the shapeshifter's corpse, "did most of it for me. The monster movie thing, the disguises, Lucy—they were all his game."

"To get victims," Dean ventured.

The trickster's grin widened. "Actually, the victims were mine. Dermis-boy there was trying to save them…although, granted, not doing a very good job."

Dean's face creased with confusion.

Brewer heaved a put-upon sigh. "Oh, man, I really have to spell it out for you, don't I. Our kind can't kill his kind—it's in the rule books somewhere. But he was ruining my fun, so I—"

"—had us do it for you," Dean finished grimly. He glanced at the dead shifter, feeling an odd moment of remorse. "So, what, you pick some poor self-righteous vics who you figure had it coming, kill them with a couple of classic movie monsters, and pin the blame on the town nutjob—who also happens to be a shapeshifter who gets his freak on for horror flicks—then just wait for word to get around?"

The being shrugged. "Something like that." He was standing now where Dean had been, a few feet away from the dead shifter. He gave it an amused look. "And you all fell for it, hook, line, and sinker."

Dean nodded, lips pursed. "Pretty smart, I'll give you that. Creative, even. Just overlooked one little thing."

Brewer tilted his head, gamely eyeing Dean. "What's that?"

Dean smiled. "Sink 'er, Sammy."

The trickster opened its mouth to ask, but then its eyes fell to its chest. And the stake tip protruding from it, painted with both its fresh blood and flecks of dried red from its last victim. Its lips worked soundlessly for a moment, then it tumbled gracelessly to the floor, shimmering once before it lay still.

Revealing Sam standing behind it, arm still raised as he stared down at the body with satisfaction. Then he looked up at Dean.

Dean's mouth widened into a grin. "Seems kinda fitting, stake through the heart, huh, Van Helsing?"

Sam rolled his eyes. But Dean was pretty sure he saw his brother's lips turn up a little.

00000

With two dead bodies in the house now, including one Sam had killed up close and personal, clean-up had become inevitable. Dean cheerfully set fire to the place, then sat in the car down the street with Sam and watched it burn.

"So…the shifter didn't even kill anyone?"

Dean rucked up his shoulders. "Who knows? I just don't think it killed Rick or Marissa or the museum guard. Doesn't mean it wasn't leaving behind a string of bodies of its own. Maybe it tried to pull this whole Mina thing before."

Sam was slowly shaking his head. "I don't know, it seemed pretty fixated on Jamie. Maybe it was just…misunderstood, kinda like Frankenstein's monster, just in love with something it couldn't have."

"Yeah, and look how _Frankenstein_ turned out." Dean frowned at him. "You seriously feeling sorry for a shapeshifter?"

Sam glowered at him. "If we killed an innocent creature that was just trying to stop people from getting murdered, then yeah, Dean, I am. Why aren't you?"

"Sam, it tried to _electrocute _me. It knocked you through a wall—God knows what it would've done to Jamie."

"Or maybe that was just all part of the trickster's illusion," Sam fired back, lips compressing stubbornly.

Dean opened his mouth, closed it again. Fact was, Sam was right. And it sucked. "Yeah, okay, maybe," he muttered. His cheek twitched, and he rubbed a hand over his face. "I hate this shades of grey stuff. Why can't things just be black and white one time? I mean, seriously, is that too much to ask?"

"Something that seems evil really being evil?" Sam said softly.

Dean's head shot up, to see his brother's suspiciously shiny eyes. Oh, no. They weren't going here again. Jack Montgomery and Sam's powers and all that crap was behind them, and Dean was determined it was going to stay there. "Something that doesn't seem evil to me to begin with," he countered solidly.

The liquid emotion deepened in Sam's eyes.

Dean stared back equally hard for a moment. And…that was just about enough for him. He shook himself. "Speaking of Jamie…"

Sam groaned.

Dean's mouth curled. "Hey, gotta make sure she was real, right? I mean, who knows what the trickster made up? I could still be—"

"Just…don't say it."

Dean grinned at him and turned the engine over. "And after that, we're renting _Indiana Jones_."

"It has aliens, Dean," Sam said flatly.

Dean paused. "Seriously?"

Sam sighed. "I watched it on pay-per-view one night in a crappy little motel room, trying to pretend you were sitting there next to me making fun of it, but it didn't work, all right?" He threw up his hands a little in embarrassed exasperation.

Oh. Yeah, he hadn't thought Sam had been having fun while he was…dead, but…yeah. Okay.

The smile was less smirk and more fond this time.

"Aliens, huh?" Dean shrugged. "Well, can't be weirder than half the things we see every day, right?"

Sam was still shaking his head as Dean pulled the car around and headed back into town.

**The End**


End file.
